Chapter 19 #2
Rosalynd went very still. Then she exhaled, sharp and disbelieving. “Thirty-two,” she repeated. “My God.”
I watched her hands curl on her lap, the only outward sign that she was fighting to keep her composure.
“That is only the number we can prove,” I said quietly. “There will be more.”
Rosalynd held herself motionless for a moment longer. Then she drew a slow breath, lifted her chin, and looked down at the papers again as though sheer will might force them to yield their secrets.
“Then we had best get to work,” she said.
We began with the reports on the missing girls we knew about. I handed them across one by one. She read them swiftly but not carelessly, lips thinning as the same phrases recurred.
“‘Probably left of her own accord.’ ‘No evidence of abduction.’ ‘Presumed to have sought other employment.’” She set the latest down with more force than was strictly necessary. “They write as if these girls were wayward kittens.”
“You will find no search parties recorded,” I said. “No follow-up visits. No effort to compare one disappearance with another. Each is treated as if it existed in isolation.”
Her gaze moved over the scattered pages. “And yet when one sees them together…”
“The pattern becomes rather hard to miss.” I reached for the coroner’s summary and nudged it toward her. “This is the report concerning the body from the Thames. Anna Price’s. She was found at the Stangate Wharf.”
Silence gathered while she read. The lamp flame hissed faintly. Outside, the city had sunk into that strange hush that falls in the small hours, when even the carriages seem to pass more quietly.
Her eyes moved down the page. Once. Twice. The hand holding the paper grew very still.
“‘Linear abrasions present at both wrists,’” she quoted. “‘Bruising to inner thighs and upper arms.’ ‘Signs consistent with recent sexual intercourse.’ ‘Condition undernourished.’” She lifted her head. “And no one thought this suspicious.”
“The surgeon thought something,” I said. “He saw enough to record what he did. He chose his words with care. But without a knife in the chest or a rope around the neck, the coroner would not pronounce murder. And without that pronouncement, the Yard would not look beyond the surface.”
She lowered the page slowly. “They looked at rope marks. At bruises. At a girl half-starved. And decided that she drowned of her own foolishness.”
“They decided it would cost them less to believe that than to consider the alternative.”
Her jaw worked as if she bit back words no lady would utter. When she spoke, her voice had gone quieter, not louder.
“She was not a loose thread to be cut away. She was somebody’s daughter. Sister. Friend.” Her fingers tightened on the edge of the report. “They have consigned her to a line in a ledger.”
I reached for the mortuary entry and handed it across. “Speaking of ledgers.”
She read the single, blunt notation. It took less than a breath.
“Female. Unknown. Taken from river. Transferred for burial. No claimant.” The paper shook once between her fingers, then stilled. “That is all she rates.”
“For the Yard, yes.” I leaned forward, bracing my forearms on the table.
“For us, she is more. She is proof that these girls are not running of their own accord.” I drew the map toward us, the one I had marked earlier with the dots of their last known whereabouts.
“See here. Lambeth. New Bond Street. Bloomsbury. St Agnes. All within reach of a road to the river. All in places where a woman might be sent on an errand or lured with a promise.”
She bent closer. The scent of her, tea and lavender and something warmer beneath, slipped under my guard.
“When did each vanish?” she asked.
I pointed to the dates I had written beside each mark.
“Three in late February. Two in early March. One just before the body was found. Another group fell away in early April. Two more last week. There are others, but these belong to Sister Margaret’s list and the reports the Commissioner was willing to part with.”
A small line had formed between her brows. “They disappear in clusters.”
“Yes. Roughly every four to six weeks, a group of girls vanishes. Some from homes. Some from business establishments. None with enough rank to force the Yard to take notice.”
“And Anna Price’s body was found in late March.”
“Just after the first cluster disappeared. The coroner places her death within days of discovery.”
Rosalynd went very still. Her hand hovered above the map.
“So they take a group of girls,” she said. “Use them for whatever depravity they have conceived. Some survive. Some do not. Those who die are given to the river. Those who live are kept, or passed on.”
“That is my reading,” I said. “It fits what we heard at the Marwoods’ garden. It fits what the serving woman in Chelsea feared to say outright. It fits Riversgate, where you went today.”
Her eyes flashed at that reminder, though not in apology. She tapped a finger against the map, near where I had marked Chelsea.
“Riversgate is here. And Anna Price was found at Stangate Wharf on the Lambeth shore.” Her finger slid downriver. “Whatever lies between the two has not yet shown its face. But it must be there.”
“Not necessarily,” I said.
She looked up sharply.
I reached across the table and turned the paper so the river’s curve sat properly between us. “You are thinking of the Thames as though she were a road,” I said. “A body goes in at one point and emerges at the next, neatly downstream.”
“Is that not what happened?”
“Not on this river.” I tapped the line of water with my fingertip.
“The Thames is tidal through London. Twice a day, she reverses herself. Flood tide runs upriver. Ebb tide carries everything back down again. A body can drift east, then be drawn west, then snag on a stair or a wharf until it is freed hours later.”
Her brows drew together as she stared at the map.
“Anna Price may have entered the water well east of Stangate,” I continued, “and still been found there. Which means our house need not sit obediently between Chelsea and the Lambeth shore at all.”
Rosalynd’s mouth tightened. “Then it could be anywhere.”
“Not anywhere,” I said quietly. “But wider than your line suggests.”
Her gaze remained fixed on the map, but I could see the strain in her expression, the fierce effort not to be overwhelmed by it.
Without thinking, I lifted my hand and cupped her cheek, forcing her attention back to me. “Rosalynd. We will find it,” I said.
She looked up. For a moment, something raw and unguarded showed in her expression.
“We cannot let another girl end in a ledger,” she said. “We cannot.”
“No.” The word came out more like a vow than I intended. “We will not.”
Our gazes held. Her pupils had widened, whether from the lamplight or the hour or from anger, I could not say. The air between us felt charged. One unwise movement might tilt it into something neither of us could claim as accidental.
A sharp knock on the door snapped the moment in two.
Rosalynd drew back at once. I lifted my head.
“Come,” I said.
Milford entered with an envelope on a tray. His expression had taken on that particular set I had learned to dislike, the one that meant unpleasant news had arrived.
“Forgive the interruption, Your Grace. This arrived from Scotland Yard. The messenger insisted it was urgent.”
My hand closed around the envelope. The paper crackled. I broke the seal and unfolded the single sheet inside.
The hand was untidy, the ink blotched. The meaning came through clearly enough.
A body was found in the river. Female. Approximate age similar to the last. Recovered further down this time. Brought to the Lambeth mortuary. Coroner notified. Inquest to be convened.
I let out a slow breath. Looked up.
“The river has given them another,” I said.
Rosalynd’s face had gone very pale. “Lady Honora?”
“Unknown.” I folded the note. “But whatever the Commissioner believes, I do not think this is an accident. Someone is intentionally killing these young women.”
Rosalynd’s hand pressed to the edge of the table, as though she needed to steady herself. Her eyes lifted to mine, fierce despite the shock. “This cannot go on. We have to stop it.” There was no trace of fear in her voice. Only resolve.
“We will.” As the words left my mouth, I knew them for truth. Not hope. Not bravado.
Whoever had been feeding girls to the Thames, I would find him. I would drag him into the light. And I would end this horror—once and for all.